


Can you believe it?

by divinemalefactor (panathema)



Category: Sideshow - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, First Meetings, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not really romantic but you Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 22:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18837805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panathema/pseuds/divinemalefactor
Summary: It was the first time Sideshow had gathered to meet in person, and Buck was late."Who’s to say he’s not already here?” Bed dropped his voice to a whisper, leaning forward. “He’s here, and we didn’t even notice.” It was clear he was being dramatic, but at least it would show he was back to joking around again. Nothing to worry about here, folks.“You reckon? I think he’s waiting to make an entrance, he’s gonna go all out.”"Nah, no way, he’s not coming,” Zyke chimed in from over in the shitty folding beach chair he’d been given, words making their way out around half-chewed food.





	Can you believe it?

**Author's Note:**

> if you are clicking on this bc ur one of my subs who came for buff anime boys... i'm sorry, this is a one-off i promise. ALSO a friendly reminder, this is explicitly about the fictional, GTA ‘character’ versions. not the people themselves. i do not ship them irl and if u do dm me so i can fucking go feral on ur ass, @ bedbnanas.tumblr.com

This hadn't turned out to be the fun social event Criken had planned it to be, but that didn’t surprise the criminal codenamed BedBananas in the slightest. 

Their first meetup, their first time seeing each other in person instead of just colluding over secure lines, and it was exactly what Bed had anticipated. Tense, because now everyone had power over the other. Relieved, because finally Sideshow was becoming a _gang_. Chaotic energy electrified everything, because fuck, has Criken really had to organise this to be at one of Fake Chop’s safehouses? 

The assholes were there too, looking relaxed amongst the mess of furniture, odd stains, costumes and high powered munitions, joining Sideshow in eating the offered barbequed food Hundar and Tomato were cooking. It had just been Tomato initially, but evidently suspicious of either poisoning or bad cooking, Hundar had quickly stepped in. It was his warehouse, anyway. Bed didn’t blame him for taking charge.

This many chaotic people in one building, one large warehouse with guns and drugs and dildos scattered throughout, could so quickly go bad.

Bed could admit Fake Chop were crazier than Sideshow, and it wasn’t a compliment. There was no smarts to their fun, just chaos and wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Tonight, though, they were the chaperones, as ironic as that was. They were the ones who are supposed to stop the Sideshow boys from killing each other, and shockingly enough they’d done a pretty good job of keeping things light so far. 

Yeah, Sideshow were friends with each other. Best friends. But they were also all criminals, ranging from hackers to actual murderers, although none of them were exactly boastful about the shit they’d done. They were smart; an actually talented crew, but no less anarchic than the other gangs in Los Santos. Or maybe Bed was just biased. 

Bed sat with his plate of food, some burned meat and an overdressed salad, both of ambiguous origin and ingredients, and made himself small. 

He wasn’t cowering, but he let the others think he was. Let them believe he was nervous so they didn’t suspect him of scoping out everything and everyone. As though any of them would believe it after all the shit they’d been through together.

“Jesus, they’re all kids,” Nova was saying somewhere off to the left, voice pitched low like he was trying not to let anyone hear. “Look at them.”

“We were younger,” Immortal responded from next to him, teasing rather than reminiscent. He sounded cool, some kind of accent that wasn’t Russian added to his purposefully lowered voice. Bed had eavesdropped on the Fake Chop comm lines enough to know he was putting the voice on, probably trying to sound impressive. He just sounded like a douche. “Trevor is-- was younger.”

The two men fell into silence. Bed didn’t bother looking up. He knew he’d see the faces of repressed, awkward grief. Fake Chop had calmed down a lot since their latest loss and were too busy fighting with Police Squad 7 to be the rowdy force they once were.

Bed considered himself lucky he didn’t feel that much, something inside of him built wrong and denying him any of the all-consuming emotion people were supposed to feel. It was a gift in this line of work, and one he kept hidden well. 

It didn’t change the fact he felt out of his depth here. He liked fun, he liked _doing_ stuff, but actually having his real life and his life in Sideshow intersecting made him nervous. It made him want to get up and leave just so he could relax, get rid of the knot in his stomach that tightened every time his brain told him ‘something big is about to happen’. Shit was _gordian_ at the moment, guts feeling like they were shaking from the strain of keeping him together.

Bed hated it, but the real disappointment lay in the absence of Buck. Yeah, it had been exhilarating to meet everyone for the first time, and he’d actually felt happy, truly giddy with the nervous joy of it, but that had quickly faded. 

Oh god the food was awful. 

He put the plate down at his feet, wiping his hands off on the arm of the shitty couch he’d been ordered to sit in, giving in and looking around openly at everyone. They’d all fallen into groups to converse, leaving Bed out. He wasn’t so awkward he couldn’t join if he wanted to, he just… didn’t.

The gun sitting over by the messy kitchen bench looked inviting, though. He’d be able to grab it so easily and make a break for it. Steal Aleks’ prized car on his way out and he’d have a good time on his hands. He knew for a fact that the blond kept a bat in the back seat.

His fingers itched to swing it at someone.

“Hey, Bed, hey,” Criken said, suddenly appearing in front of him. It was easy to hide the flash of annoyance he felt before it melted under the recognition of just who was interrupting his thoughts. “Don’t do anything dumb, okay?” He ran his fingers through his hair in what must’ve been a nervous tic. He could read Bed so easily, easy enough to be a threat, but Bed respected him too much to kill him for it. 

So he smiled instead. 

“Criken,” he greeted, drawing out the ‘n’. “Funny to think you’re telling me off.” He laughed, but it did nothing to ease the obvious tension between them. There were no giveaways in their voices or postures, nothing to give off any signs of hostility, but there was. They were both smiling, laughing together, but laughter among these people meant nothing. 

They’d act just the same when killing people. Tearing. Burning. Slicing, dicing, blowing up, breaking-- Shit. Bed took a slow breath, relaxing the tension that had been tightening his posture.

Everybody around them could sense it, every single last one of them tuned into the same frequency of violence. Only Tomato and Hundar kept up the pretence of conversation, chatting by the barbeque like the professionals they were, pretending to ignore the mounting frustrations. Or genuinely absorbed, who knew. Professionals, right?

It was all so obvious, though. Despite Criken’s alliance and friendship with Fake Chop, they were still wolves waiting for a sign of weakness from the baby gang they’d invited into their den. Waiting to tear them apart. 

Just for fun. Just for a joke.

They were a threat, they--

Bed took another stiff inhale, forcing himself to breathe from deep in his body instead of just heaving shallowly in his chest, and then another, ignoring that way it rattled in his throat. He was calm, he was always calm, he was _fine_. He was among friends and people who wanted him to succeed. 

“I’m just missing my boy Buck, you know?” He teased, feigning a sigh of longing. “All those good times together and he shows me up on our first date.”

“Oh, uh,” Criken said, immediately shifting on his feet. “He is supposed to be here, I invited him.”

Somehow the tension around the room got even worse, tighter and colder at the admission. Everyone was so obviously listening in on their conversation now. There was even a soft curse at Criken’s admission, but Bed was too surprised to locate where it came from.

“Who’s to say he’s not already here?” Bed dropped his voice to a whisper, leaning forward. “He’s here, and we didn’t even notice.” It was clear he was being dramatic, but at least it would show he was back to joking around again. Nothing to worry about here, folks. 

“You reckon? I think he’s waiting to make an entrance, he’s gonna go all out.”

“Nah, no way, he’s not coming,” Zyke chimed in from over in the shitty folding beach chair he’d been given, words making their way out around half-chewed food. 

Joking about it eased some of the tension, people slowly turning away and calming down. If people were joking about Buck it’d be fine, things would be just fine. That was what they were thinking. But from what Bed knew of him from over their comms during long-distance heists, all that teasing and unhinged yelling as they bonded, there was no way both parties had nothing to fear. Buck was wild. Buck was… Shit, the boy was something _special_.

Bed spent the next while sitting back and expecting Buck’s voice to blare out over some loudspeakers and announce he’d been there the whole time, listening and waiting. He didn’t seem cunning enough to do that, but the genuine creepiness of the idea checked out just fine. Or the romance of it, something dramatic and godly, a flex of power. Yeah, romance, because if the boy could pull off something like that Bed would’ve had to propose to him then and there.

Wait, did he ever catch how old Buck was?

Eugh. No, don’t think about that. What the f. What the fuck. Gross.

It wasn’t weird, anyway. He just. Fuck. Okay, Bed had a weird amount of love for the dude, the kind he’d never felt for anybody else in his whole damn life, but it was normal. Totally normal. The guy was funny and endearing, or something. Or something.

So what if he’s spent far too long wondering what he looked like, right? That was normal. He’d wondered about the others too. Tried hacking them enough to find out, but they’d all been good enough to keep him out of webcams (Buck had just had tape covering his, hadn’t even fucking _cared_ , just said ‘hello to whoever’s watching’ and done that weird laugh Bed loved). 

He liked to think Buck liked him the most, too. Openly, at least. If Bed’s casual joke-flirting was a bit obvious, Buck was a billboard. A flashing billboard with giant arrows sticking out of it. He was ‘Bed+Buck 4eva’ scrawled in a notebook over and over with those sparkly gel pens. Or something like that. Really, Buck was the type to do either. Both. Ironically, of course, but maybe not; he could always be counted upon to take a joke too far.

Taking things too far, being over the top, was his forte. It was what made him a hell of a formidable force, and was probably why Fake Chop looked so cagey. 

Bed had never expected the Fakes to look shifty and thrown off by anything, not when they had Squad 7 to deal with, but he could almost sympathise. Sure, he wanted to think it was the threat of he himself that was making them like this, even if it was just him and the rest of Sideshow, but of course, it was Buck though. 

Nobody knew shit about him.

Everybody had given away glimpses of their lives, whether on accident or to test the waters. Criken was the most open with all of them, taking the lead and being the only one who actually did anything active and away from his computer. A lot had revealed their faces at least partially before this meet-up, but Buck? The worst kind of mystery. 

How many times had he had to step away to talk to his parents while the rest of the crew were dealing with some heavy shit? While their only fieldman Criken was in the direst of situations? And still, nobody knew if it was real or staged. 

No really, did Bed have to be worried about his age? He’d never thought about it. Especially not on the night he’d promised to marry Buck, or the other night he said he’d die for him, or when he’d admitted to being head-over-heels (and all that before he had really actually started to feel the stirrings of something genuine). 

Criken knew Buck, though. Had met him before, and still hadn’t pulled Bed up for not shutting down the flirting, so surely it was fine. There was always the temptation to wring the information he had out by hand, but Criken had a kind of sanity to him that made him dangerous, even to Bed who didn’t really care for deterrents like whether he’d live or not. He respected Criken enough not to try anything shitty just for a few scraps of info. He wasn’t about to go psycho stalker lover for some dude he barely knew, anyway.

So wrapped in his thoughts, Bed didn’t notice the door of the warehouse creaking open. In his defence, nobody else did either, all still tensely waiting for something like a car to bust through the thick walls of the warehouse.

“Buck!”

Bed’s head snapped up at Criken’s ecstatic cry, losing all the careful subtlety he’d been holding on to, and he wasn't usually one for dramatics unless he had a good audience and it was planned, but his breathing picked up quick and fast enough for it to be a gasp.

Everybody was looking, but it was obvious who the pros were because they weren’t openly gawking. Fake Chop were subtle, all of them shifting to put the new arrival in their line of sight while trying not to be too obvious. Well trained, used to real life situations, always on guard.

Sideshow were all just collectively staring. 

At…

At a kid. Some kid with a backpack.

And listen, okay, Bed knew looks could be deceiving. He knew it firsthand because he himself didn’t look a thing like how he sounded, didn’t look like the most merciless of the crew who’d actually _killed_ people before, but Fuck.

All that, all those thoughts of ‘what?’ and flashing question marks in his mind, leaving him feeling hooked even _before_ the kid tripped over seemingly nothing and Criken had to catch him. The boy flailed a bit, trying to play off the stumble but only drawing more attention to it.

Part of Bed fully believed this had to be a joke because this kid… was adorable. 

'Kid' was wrong, though. He wasn’t young, probably around the same age as Bed, but he.

Fucking Christ. 

Oh _shit_.

Suddenly everything was real. Everything they’d joked about, about being in love or whatever, and that boy is right there. Looking like that. Like. Not beautiful or hot, but just. Human. Real. Bed’s heart was in his throat, pulse feeling like a solid hit, loud in his ears. Was this? Ah. What was this?

He hated to be dramatic, to be every stupid emotionally-stunted cringe character in a sitcom ever, but _was this feelings?_ It wasn’t quite love, not quite infatuation, but it was genuine. Easy. The worst thing Bed had ever felt, and it was warm. He felt like smiling, so he sat and chose to wait it out. Waited for it to pass as he watched Buck.

Brett was suddenly in Buck’s space, and Buck did this awkward thing where he flinched back but also ducked forward, some kind of overreaction with his eyebrows shooting up at the sudden wall of aggressive vegetarian beef in his face. 

“Bucklington, I know... I know I shouldn’t be surprised but how did you get in?”

“In? Oh, I, my mother and I had real difficulty finding this place you know, but we drove here and she dropped me off just down there, down the road outside in that weird passing lane bit, you know? So it’s cool.” Buck's voice was so familiar, but so different when not filtered through his mic, and Bed felt himself leaning forward in his seat.

“Your mother?” Brett’s voice pitched higher, clearly not sure if he should take it as a joke or not.

“Hey, don’t talk about my mother you, you sick freak.” Buck pointed, but he had an anxious, wide-eyed grin on his face that so matched the manic tone, and finally, Bed was getting to match the face to the voice. 

Brett didn’t look amused at all, watching and studying Buck for a few seconds, staring down at the finger pointed firmly at his chest until it was lowered. “Yeah, that’s great, but I was talking about our security. We have two people stationed outside patrolling the back and the front gates, not to mention all the gizmo stuff we set up.”

“Oh, the security? Yeah, yeah I uh, I just turned it off? Since your Modest guy died you’ve been really easy to deal with so I just shut it down. Should I not have?” Buck looked from Brett to Criken and back again, hands fiddling with the straps of his backpack.

“So you didn’t hurt my guys?”

“Nah, nah, of course not. Why would I? Was that a test, should I go back out there and like, whack them?”

“No, that’s fine, you’re good, buddy. You go do your thing.” Brett was relieved, that much was obvious, but still walked passed Buck and Criken to head outside, going to check to make sure.

So, Buck was all talk, huh? It was disappointing, sure, but not as much as it should’ve been. Bed still enjoyed himself thoroughly watching that nervous energy twist into excitement as Buck slowly integrated with everyone, and suddenly the tense party had life. Just like during planning and heists, with Buck’s appearance people slowly opened up and got talking, and yeah, they looked like a _crew_. Sure, the violence was still just around the corner, hunkered down with a good dose of distrust, but it was fun again. It was something. 

Watching Buck lash out and push Criken suddenly, as though doing so didn’t make everybody in the warehouse reach for the concealed weapons they were all carrying, Bed had to smile. Either oblivious, daring, or far too purposeful, Buck seriously just… did not give a shit. He looked hyper-aware of everyone looking at him but at the same time he didn’t care that he was among the itchiest, most temperamental trigger fingers in Los Santos

It made Bed laugh, suddenly and catching him by surprise, bubbling out of him before he could stop it. He muffled it quickly, but the sound carried and it was almost comical how Buck’s head whipped around to look for the source. Did he have bat ears or something? He almost immediately zeroed in on Bed, the only one smiling with a hand over his mouth and clearly trying not to laugh.

And he didn’t rush over like he had everyone else.

He just stood. And blinked. And stared, mouth parted. Then he looked away. Which was not what Bed had expected, if he was honest, but he didn’t let it show. He just kept watching, sitting easy and relaxed. 

Ever the inclusive one, Criken had noticed the short interaction, calling out, “Bed, hey, you, Zyke and I had a bet going and none of us won. What do we do with the winnings?”

Should Bed play into this? He could laugh it off and stay on the fringe of activity, or. Or he could just. He could jump int. “Oh, I think I won,” he said, getting to his feet and wandering over to their little huddle. “Because I didn’t notice him come in, so my guess ended up being closest. Pay up.” And yeah, Buck was openly staring at him again, then appeared to shake himself, nearly vibrating. 

Bed breathed in deeply as Buck all but bound up to him. If it were anybody else he would’ve startled, would’ve been worried, but he physically couldn’t stop the wide smile that tugged at his mouth as Buck finally stood right in front of him, almost touching but not quite. Not knowing what to do. That was fine; Bed didn’t know what to do either.

“Bedbananas is in the same building as me. Can you believe it?” Buck sounded like he was in awe, something Bed knew was for show, as a joke, but he still couldn’t do anything but laugh somewhat bashfully in response. 

As they talked, it all felt so easy. Bed wanted to be suspicious, but they so quickly fell into banter it was familiar. Comfortable in the weirdest way, hyping him up but also putting him at ease.

Criken was watching them with a confused smile-frown combo that Bed could only see out of the corner of his eye, an expression that was honestly funny to look at. 

Buck was even more chaotic in real life, and Bed was certain he could feel the nerves from everyone in the room, feeding off of it somehow, alternating between something more normal and the kind of eccentric speech he was known for. He was certain Buck could feel _his_ nerves. Where Bed lacked in care, Buck cared too much, and they were both so good at covering it up with jokes. No wonder Criken thought they were odd, it had to be a weird show to see in real life, expressions and body language so at odds with their words.

What didn’t settle down with the staring, and subtle studying everyone Bed noticed almost everyone had their attention zeroed in on Buck, and Buck was clearly not oblivious despite playing everything off with increasing enthusiasm. Bed had never been protective before, but at that moment he wanted to do nothing but grab Buck by his hoodie and drag him out to follow that earlier plan to steal Aleks’ car and go hit some stuff. 

Instead he smiled, brushing off another joke-flirt from Buck about how he looked like a model, and offered him a seat on the couch next to him, far too pleased when he sat closer than necessary, their shoulders and thighs pressed against each other as they kept shit talking, the two of them falling into laughter at Buck’s vocal disgust at Bed’s admission to suddenly being an anime roleplayer.

Bed was really, _really_ looking forward to robbing a bank with this boy. He’d never wanted something so much in his life, and he only hoped Buck felt the same.

**Author's Note:**

> i actually ended up Not Liking my buck so in future i'll give him more BASTARD ENERGIES. i promise he's only like this bc it's first meetings okay


End file.
